EY and Microsoft Corp. have announced Dana Holding Corp. as the inaugural winner of the EY/Microsoft Digital Innovation Award. The award will be presented each year to companies that are delivering significant value to their customers, shareholders and employees through activating digital technologies, such as Microsoft Office 365.
“In working with EY and Microsoft, we seized an opportunity to create a new, more responsive, nimble and innovative IT culture at Dana — one that has helped us to deliver an even better experience for our customers,” said Kevin Parlette, vice president of information technology, Dana. “Change requires sincere effort, and we are deeply honored that our work, collaboration and accomplishments are recognized through this award.”
Victor Morales, vice president of enterprise partners at Microsoft, noted that Dana’s recognition is based on several significant achievements in the past year, including an appreciable reduction of hours committed to site maintenance, upgrades and enhancements across Dana’s corporate intranet and a momentous increase in collaboration capabilities for the company’s 23,000 employees around the globe.
“We also lauded Dana for saving millions of dollars through cost-avoidance of expenses like software licenses and hardware maintenance and achieving serious reduction of inefficient activities in the product launch processes, including manual activities, enabling the timely completion of multi-year programs,” added Morales.
“Dana was chosen for its innovative use of Microsoft technologies to deliver real business benefits within Dana and to help its clients address industry issues,” said Greg Jenko, principal, Ernst & Young LLP, and EY Americas Digital and Emerging Technology leader. “It is fitting for Dana to be our inaugural winner, considering the global activation of their borderless collaboration platform and efficient business process automation solutions. Dana successfully collapsed organizational silos and digitized business processes as part of its own technology transformation.”
EY launched a strategic business relationship with Microsoft in 2015, to develop new and innovative services through their digital-age strengths to companies around the world. The new services utilize EY analytics, cybersecurity, digital enterprise strategy, digital and emerging technology enablement, people services and program management practices to deliver new offerings using Microsoft’s cloud and data platforms. The goal is to help customers remove barriers to digital adoption, improve employee experience at work and maximize their returns on their investments in digital technologies.
“We are thrilled with the new digital solutions and capabilities we have gained by working together with EY and Microsoft,” added Jeff Heyde, director of global systems, Dana. “Creating new and greater opportunities for collaboration is critical for an organization like ours that is heavily focused on innovation. Our relationship with EY and Microsoft has been insightful and highly productive.”
